An Amateur Classicist's Review of Political Philosophy, Theology, and Literature, with Occasional Reflections on the Age That Is Passing

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Why Multiculturalism Emphasizes Race

The later chapters of Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club provide a suggestive history of the origins of multiculturalism. Rather than some creation of the late 20th century, the emphasis and indeed celebration of cultural distinctions began far earlier.

Influenced by the strict categories of so-called racial science, some American elites as far back as the 1910s emphasized the cultural differences of immigrants as a defense against the flattening effects of mass culture.

"Already we have far too much of this insipidity--masses of people who are cultural half-breeds, neither assimilated Anglo-Saxons nor nationals of another culture... Letting slip whatever native culture they had, they have substituted for it only the most rudimentary American--the American culture of the cheap newspaper, the "movies," popular song, the ubiquitous automobile.

Bourne's reference to "whatever native culture" immigrants possess is quite consumerist. It foreshadows present lovers of diversity who act as if diversity only means exotic food, clothing, and music.

Bourne also provides a very contemporary-sounding condemnation of the "imposition of values":

"If freedom means the right to do pretty much as one pleases... the immigrant has found freedom, and the ruling element has been singularly liberal in its treatment of the invading hordes. But if freedom means democratic cooperation in determining the ideals and purposes and industrial and social institutions of a country, then the immigrant has not been free, and the Anglo-Saxon element is guilty of just what every dominant race is guilty of in every European country: the imposition of its own culture upon the minority peoples.

Multi-culturalism is simply old racial science plus egalitarianism. Thus, it often retains the view that race is essential and all else is accretion. In the words of Horace M. Kallen, "men may change their clothes, their politics, their wives, their religions, their philosophies, to a greater or lesser extent; they cannot change their grandfathers. Jews or Poles or Anglo-Saxons, in order to cease being Jews or Poles or Anglo-Saxons, would have to cease to be."

The belief that ethnicity is more enduring than marriage, philosophy, or religion seems to have endured to the present day. It is a correlate of a materialistic society that holds the human genome to be more real than the individual, even more real than God.

This supposition is why a certain poor excuse for an Irishman, who runs some sissy-named organization called the Shamrock Club, can object to Holy Week trumping St. Patrick's Day festivities. He was able to say, "Actually, you’re born Irish first, and then you’re baptized Catholic."Horace Kallen would approve, though St. Patrick certainly wouldn't.

3 comments:

WLindsayWheeler
said...

Wow. Multiculturalism is part of the political correctness platform that is Marxist. It is part of the Globalist agenda. This is why we bombed Serbia. Multi-culturalism is NOT (let me repeat) NOT old racial science plus egalitarianism. Multiculturalism is SOCIALIST and MARXIST.

But isn't this a quasi classical blog? Haven't you read Aristotle's Politics where he discusses racial differences? That the Greek is superior to the Asiatic? to the Barbarian?

Werner Jaeger writes, "The nobility is the prime mover in forming a nation's culture". (Paideia, Vol. I pg 4). It is Aristocracy that forms culture; they intellectualize the ideals of their particular race. America has no culture because it has no true aristocracy.

Multiculturalism is about deconstructionism; it is about watering down, thinning out the dominant race and culture. Multiculturalism is defined by the Minority races not by the dominant race for Multiculturalism is the tool to beat down, afflect, destroy the dominant race and its culture.

I thought the saying was "When in Rome---Do as the Romans do". Shouldn't minorities be accepting of the Dominant culture? And if not---expelled or quarantined?

When you write: "The belief that ethnicity is more enduring than marriage, philosophy, or religion seems to have endured to the present day. It is a correlate of a materialistic society that holds the human genome to be more real than the individual, even more real than God."

My dear sir "belief"???? Race is a ""Belief"""? Or is it part of REALITY? I am not an academic but a farm hand. You mean to tell me that Breeds of chickens, cows, horses are a "Belief"? I work in Reality---Not in the Rarified field of Academic nonsense.

When Jacques Maritain writes that one of the basic commitmants of philosophy is Commonsense---Where is that commonsense when one negates "race" and calls it a "belief"? I find that strange. What do the Eyes observe? Never before have I seen such a negation of reality by a Catholic. Does Ideology, does Political Correctness, trump Reality? Is not a Catholic duty to Reality or to Ideology, or to Marxist Ideology?

Is not Man Flesh? And is it not nihilist to deny the Flesh and its consequences? Did not God intend Race? Did not God plant man into Race? That poor Irish Bartender is right, he has more commonsense, "Actually, you’re born Irish first, and then you’re baptized Catholic." Before we are "religious" or catholic---We are a Race! To deny Race is Nihilism.

Apostolos Makrakis postulated that Truth is the Faithful representation of reality. Is not Race a part of reality? To say that Race is not, is speak an untruth for it is not a "faithful representation of reality". Thou shalt not bear False witness. That means also on speaking of matters of race.

The Bible speaks of races using the Greek word "ethni". It is translated as "race", "nation", or transliterated as "ethnicity". All mean the same thing. If the Bible Speaks of it, Why doesn't Catholics acknowledge that? If Plato and Aristotle write on Race, why think it is a "modern" invention? All of Classical literature is full of Race, racism (the Oxford English Dict meaning that there are race differences; not the Marxist meaning) and racialism (the Oxford English Dict. meaning that some races are superior to others, not the Marxist meaning of the term). So I fail to see how Race is a modern invention when BOTH the Bible and Classical literature all speak of it.

Why decry the "enduring" effects of Race when Aristotle says that Man is a "Social Animal" more of a herd animal than even the bee and the Ant? Isn't this what Johann Gottfried Herder described as "belonging"? That all men have a sense of racial belonging?

Have you not heard the saying---"Blood is thicker than Water"? Or "Birds of a Feather flock together"? In Jowett's translation of Plato's Republic? Or how about a Russian proverb quoted by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "What is good for a Russian is deadly for a German"?

What do all these folk sayings say about Race that somehow, modern academia fail to grasp? How about Common Sense.